Frank Thomas calls out Sammy Sosa, Skip Bayless in interview

Newly elected Hall of Famer Frank Thomas joined Jim Rome for an interview that will air in this month’s Jim Rome on Showtime beginning Wednesday night. In it, Thomas touched on multiple aspects of steroids use in baseball, including both his own doubts about the integrity of some of his colleagues and his distaste for media members questioning whether he used.

“I knew it was shady when Sammy Sosa hit 60 home runs,” Thomas said.”Sammy Sosa was my teammate for three years coming up. So watching his career and watching him grow, for three years he was capable of only 20-25, 27 home runs at the most… there’s no way Sammy doubled me up. With Mark McGwire, you really had to take a look at it because Mark McGwire had 48 home runs as a rookie.”

Sosa hit only 35 home runs in 449 games in the minors, though he was often a bit young for his level. He hit 15 home runs in his rookie season as a 21-year-old in 1990, then averaged 34 home runs a year from 1993 to 1997 before exploding for 66 in 1998.

(PHOTO: J. Pat Carter/AP Photo)

So Thomas’ version of history skips a step, for what it’s worth. Sosa came up struggling to make contact enough to hit many homers as a young player, but did show plenty of power between his rookie season and his consecutive 60-plus homer years in 1998 and 1999.

Later in the interview with Rome, Thomas added that he sometimes faces the same suspicion that plagues players of his era.

“I hate to bring up names,” Thomas said, “but Skip Bayless even said the other week, ‘How did I walk through the door without any suspicion?’ And I would like to have a conversation with him because I walked the walk and talked the talk from Day 1.”

Newly elected Hall of Famer Frank Thomas joined Jim Rome for an interview that will air in this month’s Jim Rome on (…)

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